Chao Lu receiving his Guiness Book of World Records plaque
Like all things unresolved and supposedly infinite, the number, or rather the concept, pi, is totally intriguing to the human mind. We know that we may apply pi to finding the area of circles or the period of sine graphs or the volume of spherical objects, but what is it? Over one trillion of its digits have been calculated yet still pi has no tangible or known end. We acknowledge this paradox—that pi is infinite yet we could know each digit if we wanted to—and we also acknowledge its ceaselessness and wonder: Does it really go on forever? How much can we know?
These questions have prompted a niche sub-culture of people who devote hours (if not weeks, months, years) to memorizing the digits of pi. According to the Pi World Ranking List, the world record for pi recitation is 67,890 digits, set in 2005 by Chao Lu of China. It took him one year to memorize and 24 hours and 4 seconds to recite. He was allowed no more than 15 seconds between each digit—this meant no bathroom, food, or water breaks for the entirety of the performance.
The Pi World Ranking List requires that “performances of 10,000 digits or more must be certified by an additional academic or scientific witness. Alternatively this may be an official such as a lawyer, notary, or minister.” Until 10,000 digits, a contestant just needs two independent, unrelated witnesses to verify the recitation.
Chao Lu undoubtedly has a freakish memory and a wicked work ethic. He also had a serious incentive: breaking the world record, eternal fame in the math world (or, rather, the faux-math world), and a general sense of unequivocal awe when we hear his name in relation to that number.
Freakish would also be an understatement. Google “how to memorize pi” and several articles suggesting image association, or word association, or creating a story using the phonetics of each number will pop up, promising that in eight short steps you can nail down the first fifty.
Pi Day, March 14th (3.14), usually falls in the final week before my former school’s Spring Break, and memorizing numbers to literally no end hardly takes priority over final exams and papers to most students at my high school. I, however, have always been one of those people whose memory has an affinity for numbers, and rarely forget a birthday or telephone number. The three years I competed in the annual Pi Recitation Contest at my high school, I had little to no competition—in that only one other person showed up—except for my first year, when the winner claimed to have memorized 500 back in middle school, sat down, and managed to recall 350. After he graduated, though, I resolved to memorize as much as my schedule allowed time for. I did not use any image association or phonetic tricks, but rather memorized pi in chunks of ten, to the rhythm of a telephone number (3.14159, 265-358-9793). This trick allowed me to memorize and recite 305 by the time March 14th arrived.
Outside of my high school, however, Pi Recitation Competitions and general celebration of Pi Day are both well-tended-to and attended. This year, Pi Day was especially glorified, almost as a mega-Pi day, as we not only lived the first three digits, but the first nine, on March 14th, 2015, at 9:26:53 AM and PM (3.141592653.) Pi Day celebrations across the world consisted of not only pi recitation competitions, but also pi(e) eating contests, pi(e) making contests, pi(e) throwing contests, pizza pi(e) making contests, 3.14 mile long races and the like.
Perhaps our obsession with pi comes from its accessibility: 3.14 is a number that manifests in our daily lives as easily as we want it to. Or in the case of pi recitation, anyone can memorize for as long as he or she wants, at no cost other than time. Or maybe it really is the immortality, rather, eternity that is pi that challenges us to unpack it.